Team Rockit US tour diary - Sept 4th-Sept. 13th, 2008

How this tour diary will work / How it should be read:

If you've read or even glanced at the TEAM ROCKIT tour reports/diaries #1 though #5 you'll see that there's a specific account of each day with photos to match. Honestly, this was the first time we toured in the states in awhile and I had so much freedom to get normal day job work done in the van that it consumed most of my time. Don't get me wrong, I had the labtop with me, I took a decent amount of photos, but I didn't pour over each day and the super unique experiences of being on the road. So, this tour diary is more like a photo recap with a few long descriptions of what happened each day (if I remembered something specific). My apologies to those that like to "dig in" to some real stories about what happened, but I'd rather have something brief up than nothing. Of course it's so easy to just keep on typing, so this might be longer than I expected.

Opening thoughts -Touring in general + US Touring vs. European Touring

The summer has come and gone along with our last European tour. We're still stoked and giving it our all to promote our 5th record "Rockit Science". This midwest/east coast tour sort of fell in our lap with RESTAVRANT. Matt Suhar from Tantrum Management needed help with their tour and suggested we jump on the bill together. We haven't toured in the states in awhile (no real reason, just used more of our time for Europe to date...better touring conditions). So it was time to set out and remember what touring was like without needing a driver and truly being on your own. When thinking about the tour diary, report, whatever, I didn't know if the domestic stuff was worthy of another tour diary, BUT:
a) Any time we're on the road more than 3 days will apparently warrant a tour report of some kind.
b) The conditions in Europe are a lot more "fun", but I guess I should show both sides of what touring can be like
c) I want a place to go back and read about this stuff when I'm really old
d) This tour diary will be different. I usually poor over making these "perfect" or exactly how I want them to look and it takes HOURS...(granted, I normally have hours in the car), but this one will be a little more loose.

RESTAVRANT

Why do bands continue to tour? Isn't this just a myspace generation now?
I've contemplated this many times even as I was booking this tour. I think the days of pounding it out on the road are coming to a close for most bands as everything is just so accessible on the internet. Jonathan from Restavrant put it best, "This is a great experience, but obviously seems a bit inefficient to reach people." I couldn't agree more, BUT conclude that all bands MUST tour once or twice to just find out something about themselves, their band, how they function as a unit, etc. I personally see our web hits go up drastically after a tour, but you're at the mercy of every club you go to. You can promote the crap out of things online, send posters, send flyers, and work yourself into a frenzy trying to get people to come out and sometimes it's a great night and sometimes it's a shitty night....too many factors play into it. We've had a decent little response so far....

DETROIT - FRIDAY 9/5/08- THE BELMONT BAR

 

I love playing in Detroit. We've played the Belmont about 5 times now and it's always a real cool vibe there in the area of "Hamtramck" in the Detroit mertopolitan area. My aunt Diane lives about 45 minutes north from this area and she always brings out a ton of people. We were also lucky enough to play with a super cool, local, opening band named Aguado. Man, those kids played covers of Faith No More, Ween, and a bunch of other stuff on top of their originals. And they could really play! That's always a plus to meet other cool bands on tour. Restavrant played after us that night and then the evening closed with a local called Spider the Cat. $1 Pabst Blue Ribbon was in effect and it will become the beverage of choice at every bar we visit on this tour. How did that crappy beer get so popular at one point? We'll continue to drink it. Joe was approached by a very interesting gay person who was looking for drugs and had a dress on. The set went really well as the sound is quite good there. We ended the evening shoveling down Coney Dogs (chili-cheese dogs - Detroit's specialty I guess) at National Coney Island before hanging out until 3 in the morning. (I'm making these little entries short, because hopefully the pictures will sort of tell the story.)

OSH KOSH, WI - SATURDAY 9/6/08- THE REPTILE PALACE

RESTAVRANT live at the Reptile Palace

MADISON, WI -SUNDAY 9/7/08- THE FREQUENCY

Driving into Madison and their capital building

Well, looking back on this gig, it was really amazing for a Sunday, even with limited people there. We hope we didn't piss off the booking dude too much when making a stink about the lack of dough at the end of the night, but oh well, we're a band on tour, what else would they expect.

The Frequency used to be a place called the Slipper Club. We played there ages ago with a stellar band from Madison called Droids Attack who are still pounding it out like we are. Go see them if you have the chance. Anyway 9/7 was a Sunday, and the gig was one of the last ones booked so we didn't have any days off on the tour. Strike one, BUT there were two local bands on the bill so we thought that would be more than sufficient to help out the night. Apparently local bands don't draw many people on this tour, or at least the ones we played with. No biggie. The sound was amazing, the front bar was amazing. The Bears game was on and we beat the Colts. The other bands were super cool (Cactus Joe and New Mountain Kickers). NOEL the bartender was also super cool and invited us to hang out at her roomate's birthday party that evening. Joe and Killian played acoustic guitar and sang into the night. I slept in the van that evening as I just wanted a little sleep. It's weird some nights all of us are raging to party a bit, some nights it's 2 out of 3 of us, some nights it's just 1 of us...hard sometimes to stay in synch, but the majority of the evenings we were "on" and just happy to not be in the normal day to day of a normal job. Bands! You definitely want to play this venue if you can, just make sure you have some good locals on the bill.

HOLY CRAP! I just noticed the copyright thing on the bottom of this tour diary page. We've almost been doing this for 10 years?! NOTE TO SELF: We MUST plan a 10 year anniversary show in April 2009..MAN, has it been that long?!...READ ON FOR MORE TOUR FUN...